Prior art cable modem termination systems (CMTS) in DOCSIS systems establish upstream burst profiles, one for each DOCSIS upstream. The burst profile for each upstream controls the data throughput rate and other burst parameters that all cable modems transmitting on that upstream must use. The burst profile must be set to the lowest common denominator such that the least capable cable modem (CM) on the system can comply with it. Typical systems have hundreds or thousands of cable modems, some of which may be legacy CMs or CMs purchased by customers that are not capable of high throughput. This penalizes all CMs on the system to transmit at a lower throughput than they are capable of if even one CM on the same upstream is not capable of transmitting at high throughput. This results in a lower average throughput on the channel. In other words, in order to ensure that the worst CM has a robust burst profile with adequate error correction protection, the whole channel is forced to operate at a lower throughput. Therefore, the upstream throughput of all CMs on the upstream will be penalized because of the inadequacy of a small number of CMs.
Therefore, what is needed is a way to get higher average throughput by using different upstream logical channels, each with its own burst profile. A way is needed of segregating the CMs in the system into groups based upon throughput capability, each group suitable for transmission on one of the upstream logical channels having a matching burst profile. A way is needed to segregate CMs with high throughput capability onto a logical channel with a less robust burst profile but higher throughput. A way is needed to segregate lesser CMs onto a logical channel with a more robust burst profile yielding higher protection at the expense of lower throughput.